


and by daybreak we'll be gone

by orphan_account



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-03-22
Updated: 2015-03-22
Packaged: 2018-03-19 02:36:21
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,044
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3593160
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>a small character study of ruby lucas, and her relationship with dr. whale.</p>
            </blockquote>





	and by daybreak we'll be gone

It gets tiring, watching all the time. Helping all the time. Baring her teeth for the wrong reasons (because there’s no blood spilled by her, not in this world) all the time. Granny works her until she’s exhausted and she likes that - likes that she doesn’t have to think too long too hard too much about the life they’ve left behind and how desperately everyone seems to want to go back. Why is she always the odd one out? She’d been a monster there. With fangs and claws and a hunger difficult to subdue. She can’t be a monster here. There are different rules. There are different rules for everyone and everything and at least here they’re all forced to be honest. Ruby is always the first person to support them, to fight for their love, to fight for their freedom, but here… Here in Maine where the first light she sees isn’t candles or lanterns but electricity which makes the night no different to the day, she can see their selfishness. Oh yeah, yeah, they’re selfless when it comes to the kIngdom, to the subjects, but weeks turn into months turn into babies and kisses and displays of affection which she misses with everything until it aches and burns and claws at her insides like the wolf she is.

He watches. All the time. Even now with the curse broken and her lipstick and legs put away he watches. Comes into Granny’s and orders black coffee with his bagel and watches the steam until it’s stone cold and she has to tip it away and bring him another. She knows that look. The gaze trained on the countertop and just behind his pupils the screaming that he’s a monster too. The conviction that he’s the biggest monster in this place and they trust him in the hospital? With all those sick people? She watches him watch her from the other side of the kitchen, watches the way his eyes follow the lines of her hands as she pulls her hair back and kneads bread like she doesn’t know he’s watching. Like she doesn’t know that, before the curse broke, he’d watch the way she way she walked from one end of the diner to the other in her shorts or her skirt. Like she didn’t do it on purpose, like the wolf in her didn’t roll over and bare her belly every time their eyes met and he swallowed like a bone was stuck in his throat.

It comes to a head when he tries to die. She can’t let that happen, can’t be the only gentle monster left in the town because she doesn’t know what that would mean any more. His self pity on any other day would irritate her, would have her raising her hackles and snarling at him that he doesn’t have it that goddamn bad, but he smells of scotch and misery and all she can do is reassure him. Pull him back from the brink and take him home to put him to bed. He’s smaller, somehow, in the middle of his bed with his shoes still on and his eyes closed against having to look at her pitying him. So she tugs his shoes off and drags his duvet up to his chin and leaves the smallest smear of red lipstick on his temple.  
“We just need the time to fix ourselves, Victor.” She whispers, not quite believing it herself, but pushing his hair back from his face anyway. Ruby leaves two aspirin and a glass of water next to his alarm clock before she closes the front door in near silence behind her. She knows hangovers, remembers blurred nights at the Rabbit Hole leading into eight am shifts with Granny severe and unforgiving even as her brain trickled out of her ears. In all that time she’s never known him to be nervous. She’s seen him - with nurses, with Snow, with anyone who’ll have him, really - and has never given him a second thought. So it’s a bit of a surprise when he comes in the next day and sits in his usual place at stupid o clock in the morning and orders a plate of eggs instead of a bagel, and gulps his coffee down before he even looks at her. After all that time watching, Ruby had gotten used to his eyes on her. Smiles and holds up the coffee pot, because from here he does look a bit green around the gills, eyes bloodshot and cheeks pale.

“You look tired.” Is what she says. What she means is, didn’t you take the aspirin you idiot?  
“I didn’t sleep well.” Is his reply, and what he means is, you didn’t stay. So she refills his mug and leans against the counter and doesn’t move his hair back from his face again even though she wants to. Purses her lips and sighs.  
“Maybe you need a vacation.”  
“That’d be nice,” he looks up at her, smile wry and just this side of cruel, “where in Storybrooke would you suggest?” And those pursed lips just get tighter, as she reaches across to flip his tie into his face, and walk away from him.

“Look,” he folds his arms and leans against the doorframe as she’s cleaning up and he’s leaving, “I’m… awful. At this. But I owe you.” She just raises an eyebrow at him over the top of a stack of trays, feeling every callous on her hands as they stretch and burn under the weight of a million dirty dishes.  
“Do you?”  
“Collaring me on the docks?” Softly, not looking at her, and it takes one inhale to understand the fear and shame hanging in the air. “I think that calls for… a drink. Or dinner. Or something.”  
“Maybe just help me with these, for a start.” The smile he offers her is small but steady, like his fingers when they brush against hers as he takes half of the pile.  
“For a start?”  
“Oh, I have a whole bunch of chores.” It’s enough to startle a laugh from him, a real one, the first one she’s heard since the night on the roof, and he doesn’t smell of bourbon or vodka.  
“Alright. I can help out for a night, I guess.”  
“Damn right you can. And I’ll sew up that coat of yours.”  
“You did give it a pretty nasty tear. I should be billing you for that, really.”  
“On a waitresses salary? Good luck with that, pal.”

They start quietly - a bottle of wine shared after her shift ends while he’s on call, a pizza split at lunchtime not bought from Grannies. He’s so damn respectful of her space, so careful with every interaction that Ruby starts to suspect that it’s nothing but the repayment of a debt. So when he takes her hand in the middle of a grocery trip it takes everything she has not to flinch away, to stare at him like he’s mad, to growl and turn tail and run run run. She doesn’t do any of that. Instead she takes a deep breath and presses their palms together and runs her callouses over his and reminds herself that they’re both monsters while neither of them are terrible. His hand is warm and dry and sure, doctors hands, and when he leaves her at the end of the path to Grannies she presses her lips against his cheek and looks at the smear of red she leaves behind. He smells like soap and aftershave and something darker, something lingering in greyscale just behind his eyes. She doesn’t invite him in for coffee, but she lets her touch remain against his arm longer than necessary when she takes the bags from him.  
“This was nice.” He offers, that tiny wrinkle of stress appearing on the bridge of his nose, so similar to her own snarl, and she smiles up at him.  
“I should—. Granny’ll be wondering where I am.”  
“Out gallivanting with the big bad wolf.” Ruby has to laugh, really, because the only other option is to scream at him, and she’s not that sensitive any more. She’s read the story, after all.  
“What big ears you have.” His grin splits his face and he waves as she lets herself back into the diner. Granny puts her on a double shift for her lateness, and by the time she’s finished stacking the freezer her ears ache from the cold.

“All the better to hear you with.” Ruby can hear the smile in his voice when he picks up the phone, can almost see the dimples on either side of his mouth, but she can hear how tired he is. How worn down from endless nights in surgery, from endless days curing colds and giving out vaccines, and it makes her bite her lip before she replies;  
“Are you working?”    
“I am,” listens to him shift, hears the creak of his chair and the rustle of papers, “until four, unfortunately.”  
“I’ll bring you some breakfast.”  
“Are you intending to be awake until four?”  
“Well, in a way.” Granny sticks her head around the door to her room and she throws a pillow at her to make her leave. They might not be cursed any more, but she’s never had this. Never had a… a boyfriend. “It’s the full moon tonight.”  
“Ah, hence your call.”  
“Something like that.” Lowers her voice and her eyes, knows he can hear the bedsprings underneath her move. “I’m still a little nervous about it.”  
“You have your cloak.” His voice takes on that soothing baritone that reminds her she's talking to a doctor, that she’s in good hands. “You’ll be alright. You can control it now, you said so yourself.”  
“Still, twenty eight years—.”  
“Just like riding a bike, Ruby. Deep breath.” She takes one, closes her eyes and lets her muscles settle. “Good girl. Now this is what we’re going to do—.” She lets him detail the night, how she’s going to run run run with the wolf and then be picked up, how he’ll bring the cloak and they’ll watch the moon go down together. Ruby almost believes that everything will be alright, and the pit of her stomach reminds her that he’s been here before. That the fear is somewhat contagious. Thinks about deep dark waters and the mob and the alternative. Decides that she’d rather run, rather hunt, rather see the world through the wolf’s eyes every month if she gets to see him through her own. 

The sun rises golds and pinks and it’s like Ruby’s seeing it for the first time, her legs curled to her chest and the cloak big enough to wrap around the pair of them. Victor’s arm around her shoulders, his other hand clasped around a paper cup steaming with coffee. He’d made good on his promise of breakfast, on his promise that it was in fact just like riding a bike. Like surfing, which she’d done one summer she doesn’t know how many years ago, thrilling and hot and beyond anything else fun. The dock’s become their spot, because the lapping of the waves reminds them both to keep breathing. To keep running, to keep going and working and screaming for more, for better. His thumb rubs over her upper arm and she sighs, leaning her head into his chest and counting out the beats of his heart against the rush of salt water.  
“What big eyes you have.” Her voice comes out fuzzy with lack of sleep and too much coffee so early, and the chuckle rumbles through him as he moves to look down at her.  
“All the better to see you with.” Hears him put down his cup and feels that sure and steady hand cup her cheek. By all rights he should be just as exhausted as her, but he doesn’t feel that way. Doesn’t shiver with over tiredness even when the wind whips around them and carries her hair with it. When she opens her eyes again he’s looking right at her. Not at her legs or her chest or her lips but at her, gaze focussed and intense. “All the better to see you with, Ruby.”


End file.
